we arrived back in brooklyn to find the rose bush in the backyard in full bloom
already, the petals have covered the ground
time flies when you are having fun
which reminds me that our time here is short
more barbeques, more bike rides, more books, more Brooklyn blogging!
When I decided to spend the day with my yoga teacher at the Hare Krishna farm in rural Mississippi, which is as weird as you can imagine, my mom thought I might be joining a cult.
“Don’t worry!” I told her.
I found myself chanting Hare Krishna and walking in a circle around an old man in a toga, wearing yellow paint across his forehead, and I thought to myself this is how it starts.
But I did not join the Hare Krishna.
I chanted and I did yoga in a temple. I ate A LOT.
I had one conversation with a man who tried to convince me that all I ever needed to read for the rest of my life was the Vedas. ”Even Shakespeare does not compare,” he told me. ”The Vedas contain all the wisdom of the universe. Don’t bother reading Dickens, Jane Austen or any of that crap!”
Yeah, well, I didn’t fall for that one. Anything or anyone that tells me NOT to read can go to hell! I know that’s not very yogic of me, but reading and writing are my religion.
I consider myself a friend of the Hare Krishna. To me, they are extreme warriors for peace. The Hare Krishna believe that the fastest way to reach enlightenment is to, you guessed it, chant Hare Krishna (or Jesus if you prefer or whatever you call your god). The other ways of getting there are not wrong, but they aren’t as good.
The Hare Krishna are essentially a vegetarian, broken record. They like to eat, dance, sing. There’s nothing wrong with that, except I think sometimes too much bhakti (devotion) turns cultish and ends up creating separation rather than unity.
Alas, we ate well and we chanted with our gracious hosts.
I guess a little Hare Krishna never hurts.
This is all you need:
a parking lot near the superdome. Not too far. Not too close. Perhaps empty. Perhaps right behind Handsome Willy’s right near 1-10.
A GIGANTIC pot, almost big enough to crawl inside.
Lots of chips and snacks.
A grill.
A car with a loud stereo.
Friends.
Shrimp & spices.
Black liquid eyeliner and gold glitter glue.
Hat & gloves.
Time to stand around.
Some “who dat?”
Careful with the propane.
Stir. Boil. Wear fleur-de-lis.
No need to actually enter the stadium to reach saintdom.
time to do the dishes
the semester is over and so it’s time to get to the millions of other things, like this blog, that i have not been doing because I have been busy with school.
in a way, i think it’s far more satisying to let the dust and dirt really pile up so that when I finally do get around to cleaning, i can see the difference.
today, my apartment looks MUCH better than yesterday, and when I cleaned underneath the bed there were not one or two little dust bunnies hopping around, but lots and I got them all!
If I were to constantly clean-up a little bit all the time, I would never get the satisfaction of really getting the gunk out from behind the faucet.
after spending hours writing a paper about Simone De Beuavoir’s theories on domesticity in Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, I have come to the conclusion that times have not changed much; the sad truth is that women, as financially independent and liberated as we are, still do most of the housework most of the time.
So, as part of my subversive, radical feminist agenda, I don’t really dust unless I must…
Maybe I am just making excuses.
my new do:
going for more of the natasha:
but, where’s my fearless leader?
H1N1
us little piggies had a seriously fun halloween
We rode the bus down Magazine Street with all the other crazies in costumes, then walked through the French Quarter where we ran into a bigger, fatter Swine Flu pig (which made us look more like piglets), then found ourselves on Frenchman Street with everybody else and their mom, but you couldn’t tell because they were all in costumes.
We watched some guys in helmets fly down the ramp of a Budget moving rental truck in a shopping cart and call themselves the New Orleans’ bobsledding team. I later found out that they were all charter school principals. That felt like a grand finale for us so we started walking back through the French Quarter to make our way home and ended up outside a bar called Mollie’s. We stood outside this bar for awhile watching a drunk vampire call out, “Nipples. Show me your nipples.”
He wasn’t talking to us. We looked like pigs. I think he was talking to Alice in Wonderland.
We bought some Beignets to make us feel better and pigged out like piggies do.
But the best (and most disturbing) part of the night, by far, was when we couldn’t find a cab home and ended up sharing a taxi with The Big Lebowski and his wife.
I thought maybe they were tourists, and then they told us that they were born and raised New Orleanians. She was very nice and smiley. He was not. He kept making fun of whatever his wife said and calling her stupid.
This was awkward.
But the worst part was when he told the cab driver to go a certain way, then got mad at him for going past the street, then told him to take me and Sam first even though we were literally passing his block, then said it again in a louder, harsher voice, then threatened to call the cab driver’s boss, then started mimicking the cab driver’s African accent, and finally threw up his hands and got out of the car when Sam and I did.
As the cab drove off, Sam and I stood there wondering why Halloween makes people act so scary. We watched The Big Lebowski and his wife saunter away.
this weekend I went to my professor’s halloween party. lots of fangs, blood and schpatzle (my professor is Austrian).
there was a contest. I did not win.
here’s what I was going for:
or maybe more along the lines of:
and here’s my interpretation:
after the party I went to a neighborhood bar with my friends (a bloody zombie and a dead indian). People stared at us when we walked in. Some guy at the bar leaned over to his out-of-town guests and informed them that in New Orleans Halloween is celebrated all month long.
I wonder who I should be tomorrow!
the other day I went for a walk through my neighborhood and I discovered a fig tree, a lime tree, a vine with purple beans, little chili peppers, a satsuma tree and plantains…
talk about eating local…
when I first moved here I remember I saw this tall scrawny kid on a little bike awkwardly riding through the streets holding out a big branch with bunches of bananas.
now I get it.
maybe tomorrow I will hop on my bike and go banana hunting.
i carry your heart with mei carry your heart with me(i carry it in here is the deepest secret nobody knows i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) by e.e. cummings
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